These are more my own random thoughts after reading Calvin, than based on his insights:
God plants a garden on the earth and puts Adam in it. He then tells Adam and Eve to fill the earth and subdue it. Since they are made in His image, could their specific task have been to copy what He did, and expand the garden over the world?
This would bring together into one divine purpose the whole of history, before and after the Fall: God has always been about growing a Kingdom. Jesus talked about it with mustard seeds and yeast. Daniel saw visions about it, of a stone that smashes kingdoms, then grows.
To reduce all of history and Scripture down to one thought: the Fall was a blip in God's plan from creation to the consummation of all things. We see sin, the cross and redemption as too overwhelmingly central because we aren't remembering these bookends of God's story. Is our focus more on the cliff of sin and judgment we fell into but were pulled out of, or more on the garden on the other side of the canyon that God has called us to repair?
The July Tabletalk on the image of God had a related article by Greg Bailey: "the early church had come to see salvation as a work of God by which He makes His people more like Christ - to the end that they more closely reflect the image of God."
The point of salvation was to restore God's image in us, and that would lead to (a much bigger now) paradise. Only now, we aren't just inheriting a small garden, or even a land of Canaan, but the whole earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment